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Bryan Bortko, an employee at Best Tool
& Manufacturing Co., monitors a laser as it cuts components for machine gun mounts.

James Dornbrook

Staff Writer

(Page 4 of 4)

Besieged by declining revenue and increasing overseas competition, Best Tool & Manufacturing Co. of Kansas City called in the cavalry to help turn the tide.

"At one time we were making 10 to 12 castings for John Deere," Best CEO Roland Mayer Jr. said. "Now we're down to just two. The rest went to Korea, where they could buy the finished machine part for less than we could buy the raw casting."

At a low point in 2005, Mayer said the company was down to about 70 employees and about $7.5 million in revenue. As one of the area's largest machine shops, Best needed to adapt to a new global economy to remain viable.

Mayer found the answer in switching to high-tech, precision work. Best set out to land large military contracts, which add stability by allowing the company to plan year to year instead of month to month. Best always did some government work, Mayer said, but now about 60 percent to 70 percent of its business is military manufacturing.

Best landed contracts to produce parts for machine guns and jets. It also recently added a one-year, $6.8 million contract to make machine gun mounts for Humvees, one of the largest single contracts it has ever received, Mayer said.

Revenue jumped from $7.5 million in 2005 to about $12 million in 2006, and Mayer said he expects to log about $15 million this year.

Tom Goodpasture worked at Best for 21 years before leaving to start Pride Manufacturing Co. in Liberty. He said Best's size puts it in a different league than many other area machine shops. Best now has about 100 employees in an industry that averages about 25 a shop.

Goodpasture said that being a larger shop also creates some disadvantages for Best because the business climate for manufacturing has shifted toward smaller jobs at smaller shops.

"So what they've had to do is step up and go after more of the defense contracts and work like that that a smaller shop can't do," Goodpasture said. "They've done it and done it well."

All the additional work creates a need for skilled employees, and Mayer said this has been the company's biggest challenge from day one.

Mayer's father, Roland Mayer Sr., helped found the business in 1956. It started with three people making fixtures, blow molds and dies in a large garage rented from Libby Foods at 17th Street and Manchester Trafficway.

Best eventually attracted large contracts from local companies, creating a need for skilled labor.

"When we started, we hired mostly immigrants because it was very hard to find the right skilled people in this country," said Mayer Sr., an immigrant himself, who brought his family to the United States from Germany in 1952. "Even today, we still have at least 15 different nationalities working in our plant."

He said immigrants worked hard and appreciated the chance to practice their trade and pursue the American dream.

Today, with stricter immigration laws, Best works closely with the "Dream It. Do It." campaign of the Alliance for Innovation in Manufacturing-KC. Best hired some of the first graduates of the program, which is designed to create skilled manufacturing employees.

George Crossland, president of Crossland Machinery Co. in Kansas City, said Best brought in or trained many of the most skilled machinists in the area.

"They eventually lose a lot of people to places like Honeywell and that kind of a business because large outfits like that can obviously pay better," Crossland said. "They've also spun off a lot of shops from guys that used to work there, which really tells you quite a bit about the training there."

Mayer Sr. said former employees have started about a dozen shops in addition to Pride Manufacturing, including Grain Valley Tool & Manufacturing Co. and Excel Tool and Manufacturing in Lenexa.

Excel Tool founder Hermann Kelter said he started at Best in 1963, about two years after immigrating from Germany.

"I thought I knew the work until I walked into Best Tool and saw what they were doing," Kelter said. "It was highly sophisticated tool-and-die work. They were never afraid to take on any project of any difficulty level. I worked with some of the most skilled craftsmen I've ever met in my life. I listened and learned a lot."

Besides investing in people, Crossland said Best also invests in modern equipment. He said the shop moved from traditional manual machines to highly sophisticated, computer-controlled devices capable of extreme precision and efficiency.

Best has more than 100 different machines. It recently invested $500,000 in a precision cutting laser that Roland Mayer Jr. said should pay for itself within about two years.

Mayer said that when he saw Best buying lots of laser-cut parts from other companies, he decided to buy a laser and do the work at Best.

"We try to do as much as we can in-house, so we're not relying so much on other vendors for the work that we have," he said. "It's all about finding ways to reduce the costs. The way to do that in many cases is to buy a machine and do it yourself."

Mayer said that before investing in equipment, the company determines whether there is enough work to keep it busy with existing contracts, even if Best can't find any additional work.

The company also shares a lot of work with its subsidiary companies, Empire Container and Quality Finishings. Best makes the blow molds for plastic bottle manufacturer Empire Container, and Quality Finishings handles all the parts coating for Best.

Mayer said Best plans to keep plugging away and continue adapting whenever necessary.

"Right now, we have contracts to go through the next year," he said. "But you have to adapt before the contracts wind down. We're a job shop and don't really have a product, so we're constantly looking for the next contract. If you have a lot of work, you still need new work to maintain what you have and to add new capacity."

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